1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a content providing system, and more particularly, to the improvement of displaying a content title list.
2. Description of the Related Art
A prior art content providing system is constructed by an Internet content provider server and user terminals connected through the Internet. In the prior art content providing system, the user operates the user terminal to continue feeding homepages until the user picks up a desired content. In this case, the user may continue scrolling the displayed page until the user picks up a desired content title. If the amount of content provided by the Internet content provider server is very large, the user can designate a retrieval condition using keywords. That is, the user inputs a keyword into a retrieval window of the user terminal to carry out a retrieval operation while the displayed homepage is fed or scrolled. As a result, a retrieval result is displayed on a retrieval result window (see: JP-A-11-85656). This will be explained later in detail.
In the prior art content providing system, however, since the displayed contents provided by the Internet content provider server are not customized for individual users, even if a retrieval operation by keywords is used, the users would take a long time to pick up a desired content title, which would increase the burden on the users.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a content providing system capable of reducing the burden on the users.
According to the present invention, in a content providing system including a content provider server connected between a network and a provider terminal, and user terminals connected to the network, the content provider server is constructed by a content managing table for storing contents along with content titles in correspondence with management identification (ID) numbers, a content managing section for managing the content managing table, a user information managing table for storing status keys showing access statuses of the stored content titles accessed by the user terminals in correspondence with user ID numbers thereof, a user information managing section for managing the user information managing table so as to set a respective one of the status keys when one of the user terminals accesses one of the stored content titles, and a content displaying section for displaying a content title list on the display unit of the one of the user terminals in accordance with the status keys belonging to the user ID number of the one of the user terminals.
Also, in the present invention, access numbers of the stored content titles accessed by the user terminals are provided instead of the access statuses of the stored content titles accessed by the user terminals. Thus, a content title list depending on the access numbers can be obtained.
Further, in the present invention, registered dates as well as content items are stored in correspondence with the management ID numbers, and final visit dates as access statuses are stored in correspondence with the user ID numbers. Thus, a content title list depending on the registered dates of the content items and the final visit dates of the user terminals can be obtained.